This Is Reality Poem by Icsis Watson

My father was an alcoholic that tried to drink his sorrows away. My mom, a battered wife. I was the innocent child that had to live the life as a ghetto hood rat. Stereotypes started when I was young. I was never going to amount to nothing and be just like my mother and father. That was my reality. I couldn’t run away from my fears because at an early age I was taught that if I did decide to run I was going to be killed by the thugs that preyed on little children. A problem child is what they would call me. Although I would make straight A’s, keep our apartment clean, and never get in trouble with the law. I would walk down the streets at night trying to imagine my life differently. The police would stop me for the simple fact that I was black. They see me and they smell blood, they smell fear because they know just like I know that my rights no longer exist. You live in the neighborhood where you are afraid to go to sleep. My parents sleep on the couch that they found on the side of the road, left for the bums. We don’t have a trash man to come here because the last two were killed by gang members. I sleep on the floor having to make a pallet every night. That there isn’t love, that isn’t sacrifice. In the neighborhood where it is normal to hear gunshots. Where if you look a person wrong you should automatically fear for your life. The life where my father would come home with a bottle of liquor that costs 8 dollars but yet he has no food to put on the table. The fridge empty and my stomach growling. Hunger pains fills my stomach. No water because my father refused to pay the bill. No electricity, we use candles and I always hope that the fired wax would drop to the floor and burn. Burn my parents and burn me so I can release and let go. Not having to worry about anything and just relax. My father comes in the house leaning to the sides and knocking stuff over. He falls to the ground and his glass of liquor breaks. I stand there hoping that the glass went through his heart. Lord only knows how many times he stabbed me in mine. The life where I don’t hear “I love you”, but on tv. The life where my dad can’t afford to buy his daily dose of coke and beats me for it. Where I’m so use to it I no longer feel pain. The life of when my mom tries to help but he turns on her and then she turns on me for getting her beat. The life that when my school notices my bruises and asked me about it, it’s been beat into my head to say “it’s nothing”. It’s been beat in my head to say “I fell, I slipped, I tripped”. Instead of telling them the whole truth, my father is an alcoholic and he takes all his problems out on me with his fist, legs, and words. They ask me why I eat too much at school. Stealing my classmates lunch boxes and devouring their chips, sandwiches, and juices. The life where I know God doesn’t love me because if he did he wouldn’t put me in this predicament. The life I live is a human that doesn’t want this life anymore. The life where I cut myself to cope with my emotions. The life that whenever I close my eyes I see myself dangling from a sheet I tied myself, hanging from the ceiling fan. The life where suicidal thoughts are apart of my sickness. The life where the word “misunderstood” defines me.